Australian Harper’s Bazaar editor Kellie Hush took to social media yesterday to express her disgust that the size of the models was overshadowing the real purpose of the week: fashion.
“This week Australia’s finest design talent are on show and all the media can focus on is the skinny model debate,” Hush tweeted.
“They [Australian designers] have no money, and when they do they put it all back into their fashion and all that the media can talk about it this one skinny girl and I find it really upsetting because they’re struggling at the moment,” Hush told The Weekly.
While Hush admits some models – like former Australia’s Next Top Model contestant Cassi Van Den Dungen – are too thin, she doesn’t think it is fair for them to steal the spotlight from the hardworking designers.
“Yes, Cassie I think is too skinny, I think she’s frighteningly skinny,” Hush says. “But I do think that it’s taking away from what this week is about and it’s about celebrating Australian fashion and I find it really disheartening.”
Shop Til You Drop editor Alexandra Carlton agrees. She is frustrated that the size of Australian models is considered so controversial when thinner girls routinely walk the runway at Paris Fashion Week without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe we just think our clothes aren’t interesting enough to talk about on their own and if that’s the case that’s really sad because we do produce some really, really exciting stuff in this country,” she says.
Carlton regularly features curvy models in the pages of her publication, and wishes other magazines would follow suit, but still thinks there is little to be gained from criticising designers for their choice of models.
“It’d be nice to see other magazines treat different body sizes with a similar relaxed attitude – and until they do, it’s probably not helpful to be whipping up publicity storms at Fashion Week, that detract from the beautiful clothes being made in this country.”
Not all of the country’s fashion magazine editors share this view. Marie Claire’s editor-in-chief Jackie Frank was horrified by Van Den Dungen’s emaciated frame, and was quick to lash out against the use of super-skinny models.
“When I saw those legs I nearly died,” she told News Limited after Van Den Dungen appeared in Alex Perry’s runway show on Monday. “I rang the model agent and said ‘Why is that girl walking down the runway when she’s clearly not healthy?'”
Frank later told the ABC she hoped her comments would open a “dialogue” for designers and magazines like hers to “sing from the same hymnbook” when it comes to health and the fashion industry but Carlton isn’t convinced.
“What is that hymnbook exactly? The hymnbook of hypocrisy? You can’t rail against the thinness of a single model but then play fast and loose with the way you portray models in your own publication. It all smells like a bit of a publicity stunt to me,” says Carlton.
Many people argue that high fashion is not meant to be realistic – that major design houses should exist in their own spheres of creative indulgence, completely separate from the real world and its concerns about body image. Hush is one of those people and hopes the Australian media ends its obsession with models’ weights and accept Fashion Week for what it is – creative escapism.
“That’s not what Australian Fashion Week is about and that has never been its role,” she says. “Paris Fashion Week is not about diversity, Milan Fashion Week is not about diversity, in terms of the size of girls.
“This is the top echelon of fashion, it’s not Target or Myer and it’s not a mass fashion show. It’s about top Australian designers who are making incredible clothes that they want Australian girls who love fashion to wear and they want to export to the rest of the world.”
And with the well-documented woes of Myer and David Jones in recent months indicating just how much Australia’s fashion industry is struggling, Carlton says that focussing on home grown fashion is now more important than ever if we want to keep our $13 billion industry alive and jobs onshore.
“Other countries are so proud of the work that they are producing and I’d really hope that Australians could be a bit more focused on that too.”
Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia opened on Sunday and wraps up in Sydney today with collections from Alice McCall, Aje and West Australian label Zhivago.
